EDITOR’S NOTE: On June 1, 2012, Marty Paslick became the Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer of HCA, following the retirement of the former CIO, Noel Williams. Mr. Paslick has been with HCA for an impressive 27 years, progressing from the Manager of Clinical Systems Development to VP of Product Development to becoming IT&S’s first Chief Operating Officer (COO). Marty brings a uniquely high level of experience and enthusiasm for HCA and IT&S and we’re excited to say he’ll be sharing that with us, bringing his one-of-a-kind perspective to this blog. We welcome Marty Paslick, HCA CIO, as our latest contributor to the blog.

What were you doing at work four years ago in June? Seems like an eternity doesn’t it? I was working in HCA’s IT&S department as our VP of Field Operations, and we were celebrating being named one of the Best Places to Work in IT by Computerworld for the first time. Fast forward to today, and I now have the privilege of serving my IT&S colleagues as Chief Information Officer. And today, as we have every year since 2009, we’re proud to celebrate that HCA IT&S is once again being recognized by Computerworld as one of the Best Places to Work in IT. It’s no surprise to me because I know our people and their commitment to their work and each other. Still, recognition like this doesn’t ever get old.

It was just before 2009 when we began our very conscious efforts to improve our workplace through new professional development and training programs. In part these efforts contributed to winning these awards and have helped HCA IT&S become a sought after place to work. We’ve also been deliberate about focusing on our employees personally and the communities we serve. From its earliest days, HCA has fostered a culture of caring by encouraging employees all across the country to participate on company sponsored teams for community charity events and community volunteer days. For example, volunteering to help build a Habitat for Humanity house. In IT&S alone, we have countless examples of where our employees take advantage of such company supported opportunities. It’s a clear and tangible illustration that our culture of caring is something we live out practically and that makes a significant difference in our communities and colleagues. There’s no doubt that there’s a strong connection between our company culture and winning this award.

Honestly, I could go on and on with reasons why I think we ranked in the top quartile this year on Computerworld’s Best Places to Work in IT roster. But when it comes down to it, HCA IT&S is an organization comprised of more than 3,000 remarkable employees across the U.S.—employees who are not only some of the best in technology but are compassionate, generous, experienced, talented, hard-working, and, again today, award-winning.

We are working toward a bold mission of becoming the “preeminent provider of healthcare IT in the United States,” and to reach this goal, we are working on many exciting and innovative technology projects this year, such as continuing to offer new features to our clinicians through hCare, our Electronic Health Record (EHR), as well as pioneering the next phase of meeting Meaningful Use guidelines.

As I said in the press release, being named as a Best Place to Work for the fourth year in a row is really a reflection of our workplace because of the caliber and expertise of the individuals that comprise this organization, who work together daily to accomplish great things. At no time in my history with the company has information technology played a more important role in healthcare and in having an impact on human life. And yet, as this award shows, our impact in IT&S can be felt in ways beyond the technology.

Marty Paslick

One Response

Good piece Mr. Paslick, my expeinece with the EHR world and interoperability issues with the VA/IPO has shed a lot of light on my understaning of what an enoumous undertaking teh path from paper to digitization is within healthcare IT – including data analytics and processing and exploting Big Data to bring costs down across the board while enabling huge strides in patient health treatment.